River People
by Buni-San
Summary: In a distorted, empty world, even a pseudo-hollow can find a moment to think to himself. I don't own Bleach.


**River People**

I really don't know where this came from, but I liked it, and wanted to write something for Bleach.

Well, happy reading!

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When it came to Ichigo and his Inner Hollow, the two had a mutual understanding-- well, not so much an understanding, as it were that they thought they understood what it was the other was after.

Both were wrong, to a degree.

The Hollow wanted complete dominance, and complete freedom. He wanted to be the king, and to shoot the gimp horse he so gleefully wished The King would show the opportunity to be. He wanted to move, to see something beside the endlessly distorted ghost town of a city, he wanted to see something besides the clouds, he wanted to have something else to entertain himself with besides his solitude and the King's thoughts.

He wanted freedom.

Freedom to kill.

Freedom to feed.

Freedom to hunt.

He wanted an escape.

He had so much power, so much raw killing talent. It overflowed. Truly, being given the chance, he could make a horrendous and merciless slaughter a work of art and beauty. He was nothing but the instinct to fight, the instinct to kill, the instinct to bleed and rip his enemies limb from limb. He was born from extreme desires and feelings-- desires of regret, self-loathing and an overpowering _need_ to get stronger.

At the same time, he was unlike any other Hollow. He was intelligent, he spoke with a sense of poetry, every word and movement he made was deliberate and serves a purpose-- even if said purpose was nothing but to humor himself.

He was also young, and had never ventured outside of his King's inner world. With his youth came imagination, and that, coupled with his insanity and forced idle existence inside the King's inner world, the Hollow had more than enough time to humor himself by thinking up every feasible way to use the sword and all of its abilities.

He, after all, did the one thing that the King never bothered to do.

He trained. He hones his skills at all times, lacking anything else to do. He gains power by natural talent, through his imagination, and through simple discovery.

He knew the blade on such a level that the King could never hope to achieve.

He _was_ the blade.

The blade _was_ him.

For someone like the King, who ignored his desires to fight, to indulge in the urges for gore and macabre brought to creation by his own hands, the strength that the Hollow had acquired in such a short amount of time would be impossible to gain. The King had no interest in seeking power even through something as menial as training as long as there were no eminent threat such as a friend's execution or a grandeur illusioned shinigami like Aizen.

The King was happy to play the part of the teenage school boy, after all.

The King was naïve.

He always expected to gain a vast amount of power when he needed it-- always from someone else, be it Zangetsu, the Hollow or help from his friends. Getting stronger took time, something that the Hollow had far too much of. Zangetsu had reached his limit when it reached Bankai. It had no further levels, only techniques that the King will never know, because he never takes the time to try and find them.

The Hollow scoffed at the very memory of the King staring so _surprised_ when he had swung and thrown the sword with such ease and force. At a glance, a _fool_ could tell that the King hadn't even thought of using the sword in such a way.

The Hollow knew why the king was the way he was: It was because he was still technically alive. In the world of the living, he had distractions at every turning corner. Idiotic appointments would keep him busy, and he wouldn't have the time to train even if he wanted to.

The Hollow scoffed again, knowing that The King wouldn't bother to devote all of his time to training until he was properly dead and in the Soul Society. The problem was that The King was so tough on his own as it is that he'd be able to keep himself alive until ripe old age. Probably. At that point, training would be useless.

The Hollow also knew that he, Zangetsu and The King were an anomaly.

The King, and he in comparison, were alive.

The fact that he had no hole in his chest added onto his decuction.

Even the other vizard had been properly dead before they had undergone hollowification. The King was still very much alive, and the Hollow had been with him from the moment he had become a shinigami. They had a living body, not a gigai.

The Hollow, having far too much time on his hands, would understandably become bored with training at least once, and ponder about this. He would realize that this was an incredibly curious oddity among the normal, and up until now, only course of action for a human to become a shinigami.

The Hollow, being young, would would try to find the answers.

The Hollow, being impatient, began to try and invade The King's mind, try to take over and control the body, hoping to find an answer.

The Hollow, being a Hollow, realized that he could be free, and had forgotten his original goal once he had started his attempt at conquest.

Once the old man had returned to his perch, not at all too happy for having been dominated by the white child, had only once thrown it in the Hollows face that he had been too drunk on the prospect of freedom to remember his original goal, and had failed because of it.

The Hollow scoffed again, his teeth grinding ever so slightly at the memory of the old man verbally demoting him down to the rank of a donkey. Hardly worthy of being called a horse if the beast would venture off on his own path on a whim and not expect to be whipped by The King.

The Hollow sat on the edge of one of the bland buildings, staring off into the endless vision of buildings.

It was raining.

There was a nearly silent shift against the water pooling around him as the old man landed at his side. "Why do you not return?" He asked, his haunting cape still blowing with a nonexistent wind even in the downpour.

The Hollow shrugged his shoulders, face and posture lax. "It's better here."

Zangetsu stared down at the white entity. "In the rain?"

The Hollow didn't elaborate.

Zangetsu gave a hum, turning to stare with his wielder's inner demon into the nothingness. "You're spending more time here lately."

The Hollow rolled his head, black eyes closing for a moment. "I can think better here. It's... hard to explain."

"Not really." The old man said, gaining his only company's attention. "While you are here, you are more easily effected by his thoughts and moods. It is... a more sane part of his soul, and you are effected by it."

The Hollow smirked. "Something like that." He said, craning his head to look up at the sky. His grin fell after a moment, eyes relaxing. "...Why is it raining? He's not depressed or anything."

Zangetsu didn't say anything as he turned around, ready to once again return to his perch. He paused after a few steps, turning his head enough to glance at the Hollow. "I don't think that this is Ichigo's rain." With that, he was gone.

The Hollow frowned, face still turned up to the crying sky.

"Tch."

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Please review and let me know what you think!

For I am a hungry-hungry hollow and they are my food!

NOM


End file.
